Mayor Wayne Brown has kicked off the city’s new 10-year budget process at an all-day budget committee meeting at the Auckland Town Hall.
Brown opened today’s proceedings, saying it is meeting number 41 or 42 in the process - a reference to the dozens of closed-door workshops on the budget - and hoped it would not drag on to the point of “needing sleeping bags”.
The mayor has already signalled a raft of cost-cutting measures and flagged a 7.5 per cent rate rise for households in year one.
The budget committee, comprising the mayor, 20 councillors and two members of the Independent Statutory Board, will debate which items from the ‘Mayoral proposal’ will be included in the four-week public consultation on the budget beginning in February.
At the start of a debate on the “mayoral proposal”, Brown said he had put together what he thinks will make rates affordable and deliver the things Aucklanders want.
He said the council couldn’t keep relying on debt to solve financial problems and proposed refreshing the fiscal rules, finding savings and introducing new financial budgeting tools.
”If we do the things I propose in the LTP (Long-Term Plan) we can keep residential rates to 7.5 per cent in year, down to 3.5 per cent in year two, 8 per cent in year three almost - due to the City Rail Link operating costs - and after that we can get down to rate increases near inflation.